by Susan Kirby
“They usually do, from what Milt said. He figures they better move in while they can. The girls are going to stay and help them pack.”
“So soon?” Thomasina felt pressured by the speed at which things were progressing. “What about the auction? Will it be right away?”
“No, not until after harvest.”
“Which is?”
“November,” said Trace.
Relieved, Thomasina buttered a slice of fresh-baked cinnamon bread. “So the house will be empty right away?”
“Milt doesn’t plan to let it sit empty for long,” said Trace. “With rural vandalism on the rise, an empty house is an invitation for trouble.”
“Oh, dear. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Milt has. He was hoping Will would move in until the sale. But Will’s business is pretty demanding. He doesn’t want to be that far out of the city. I was Milt’s second choice.”
Thomasina lowered her fork to her near-empty plate. “You’re going to move out to the farm?”
“It might be a good idea, before word gets around that we’re going out. It doesn’t take much to get the old boys at the store started,” he said, his blue gaze as direct as his words.
Thomasina remembered Emmie’s uncle and friends misconstruing a few moving boxes. She crushed lavender underfoot as she shifted in her seat. Its aroma wafted on the evening air. “What will you do with your side of the house? Rent it out?”
“I wish it was that simple.” Before he could explain, the waiter appeared with the dessert sample tray. “Did you save room for some chocolate pie?” Trace asked.
“None for me, thanks.”
“Humor me,” he persisted. “I’m softening you up for the rest of the story.”
Thomasina smiled and acquiesced. A bevy of helicopters whipped the skies overhead as the waiter returned a moment later with the pie.
“Ambrosia!” said Thomasina, when it grew quiet enough for conversation. “I’m fortified. You were saying?”
He dropped his bombshell. “I’m selling the house so that I can make a serious bid on the farm. My rental properties, too. Hopefully it won’t change anything where you’re concerned. But I can’t promise you that.”
“So I might have to move?”
“If the buyer wants it as a single unit dwelling, yes, I’m afraid so.”
Thomasina grappled with mingled emotions, not the least of which was an increasing apprehension over Trace’s willingness to sacrifice everything in pursuit of the farm. His pearl of great price. But if God was leading her to the ground, how could she not bid? “It’s a lovely house. The first to feel like a home since I left home,” she said as internal storm clouds gathered. “But I appreciate the warning. If I have to move, then I have to move.”
“You’re taking this better than I’d hoped.”
The flicker of relief in his eyes only heightened Thomasina’s wariness. “While we’re on the subject of dreams, I have one, too,” she said, and lifted her eyes. “Would you like to hear it?”
He pushed his plate aside and rested his forearms on the table, hands linked. The hands that stripped shingles and toppled porches and wielded tools with strength and proficiency and secured a rose in her hair. But how could she waver, measuring what she was and wasn’t willing to pay for her dream?
“I want to run a Christian camp for at-risk children.”
“You mentioned something of the sort this morning.”
Had she? She’d been so distracted at Antoinette leaving in a huff, anything could have flown out of her mouth. “I’ve saved for years, waiting for God to lead me to the place where I could best serve. I feel He has, and that it was by His guidance that Milt and Mary came into my life. Though at first, when Milt was giving me such a hard time, I wasn’t all that sure!” she said, and smiled.
“He’s a good guy,” said Trace, uncertain what to make of her leap from dreams to Milt. He’d lost some words to the helicopters, but waited, certain she’d explain the link.
“I thought at first he was grieving the loss of his health and youth and feared he was giving up,” she continued. “Then when he told me that he’d made up his mind to sell the farm,. I saw more clearly what the grieving was about. I think there was closure for him in having made the decision himself.”
Trace flung a glance heavenward. “I don’t believe in chance,” he heard Thomasina say. Words continued to flow from her mouth. It was no hardship watching her lips form them, even as the helicopters played havoc, drowning her out.
Thomasina was more aware of quickening nerves and her tightening stomach than the air traffic overhead. Intent on being finished with it, she gripped her hands in her lap and pushed the rest out. “When Milt told me he’d decided to sell the farm, I knew the wait was over. It was only later that I learned of your interest.”
Trace cupped his ear and pointed skyward in wordless indication, but she had averted her eyes to the napkin in her lap.
“My conscience tells me that I should have spoken up sooner,” she finished in a rush. “I hope I haven’t misled you. But the bottom line is, if I don’t do the work God has in mind for me, then I’m letting Him down.”
Now it was more than the air traffic. It was a thunderclap of realization. All along he had wondered why no one had snapped her up. Someone had. Way up. It was her faith! She’d go wherever God called her—the next county, the inner city, a distant continent.
No wonder she was so unperturbed over the possibility of moving out when she’d just moved in! She hadn’t planned on staying. She wanted the temporary nature of their relationship out in the open. Her mouth was vulnerable now that her words had stopped. Oh, so kissable. Trace drew his eyes away, and resisted the temptation to reason with her. All the signs were there, just as with Deidre. How could he have been so slow to realize?
“Trace?”
“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he said, reasoning that not every man was meant to be God’s man, or a family man, either.
She stopped toying with the pie and put the fork down. The uncertainty in her eyes cut him. He didn’t understand why, or what it was she expected of him. He struggled against an inclination to rebuff the plea for understanding, and reached across the table for her hands the way friends do when they’ve retreated from the untried, deciding friendship is all it will be.
Thomasina met his hands and grasped them tightly. The weight lifted from her shoulders. She’d been so afraid honesty would drive a wedge. “I should have told you the other day in the woods when you shared your dream. I tried, but…”
“It’s all right,” said Trace, heat rising at her reference to him asking her if she was spoken for.
“Still friends?”
“Sure.”
“I’m sorry it’s working out this way,” she said wistfully.
“Me, too,” said Trace, for her regret was as bittersweet as her chocolate eyes.
“I guess we don’t need to talk it to death, then do we?”
“Nothing to be gained by that,” he agreed, and even managed a smile. It seemed so familiar. Just like before.
No. It was different this time, Trace reasoned a moment later as Thomasina excused herself to the powder room while he waited for the waiter to bring the check. He was older. He valued his independence. And he knew life went on. Love’s first bite was the toughest. He’d get through it this time, no sweat.
They left the restaurant under a purple sky. Thomasina’s evening bag was in her right hand, her left hand free. Twenty minutes ago, Trace would have reached for it. But not now. His thoughts shifted to work, his antidote for disappointments large and small. “Ricky’s free to help me tomorrow. But it’s his friend’s day for the truck, so he has no transportation unless I drop my truck by his place.”
“You’d do that?”
“From what I’ve seen, he’s responsible,” said Trace. “Mind if I catch a ride home with you?”
“Does that make me an accomplice to your working
on Sunday?”
“You won’t cut trees, you won’t cut church. What will you cut, Tommy Rose?”
“Ricky’s impressionable,” she reasoned, heat sweeping up her face. “You want to be a good role model, don’t you?”
“No, you want to be a good role,” he countered with a perverse grin. “I want to get a roof on the house.”
“Then we’ll leave my car for him instead.”
“I can’t let you do that,” said Trace, chagrined she would offer with the blush of his mockery still on her cheeks. “Forget I said anything. I’ll come pick him up in the morning.”
“That’s a lot of trouble when we could as easily leave my car for him,” said Thomasina. “He’s driven it before, and besides, my lease doesn’t run out until the end of the month. I’m entitled to a space in the back lot.”
Protesting when she looked so determined made Trace feel small. He gave it up, walked her to her car, then climbed into his truck and followed her across town.
Thomasina parked the car in her old space, ran the keys upstairs to Ricky and told him she’d need it in time to make it to her home church in the morning. The children who had attended Vacation Bible School the previous week were to sing for worship services in the morning. She had promised to take Winny and Pauly, and Antoinette had said she would go, too. Though that was before their misunderstanding.
Anxious not to blot her evening with matters better left in God’s hands, Thomasina crowded out the thought, bid Ricky good-night and returned to find Trace waiting for her at the curb. His truck was a tricky climb in a straight skirt. Maneuvering it with grace, she spoiled the whole effect by sitting squarely on a paper bag in the seat.
“Oops. Nothing breakable, I hope.” Thomasina lifted one hip to retrieve the sack.
“Nothing important,” said Trace. He resisted the urge to wrench it out of her hand before she looked inside, and said with feigned nonchalance, “Poke it under the seat.” He let go a caught breath when she had done so. Inside the plain brown bag was a box of chocolates and a paperback novel. Chocolates, flowers and romance. His impulsive gesture of this afternoon was bittersweet now.
It grew quiet on the ride home. Thomasina told herself it was a companionable silence. But as it stretched, she knew it was not. Trace’s musky cologne tantalized, filling the air she breathed. Yet his withdrawal was unmistakable. What had gone wrong?
Was it the farm? Was he having second thoughts about her admitted interest in it? He had seemed all right when she told him. Or was that just his public reaction? Thomasina stole a sidelong glance. Her gaze lingered on his hands, firmly gripping the steering wheel. Traveled to his long upper lip. Lifted to his eyes on the road. He met her silent study, his expression inscrutable. She tried small talk. His responses were polite but brief, discouraging idle chatter.
Thomasina gave up the attempt, and fixed her eye on the distant moon. As the silent miles passed, her hopes withered like buds crowded into so small a container, there was no room to blossom. By the time Trace pulled into town, all Thomasina wanted was to have it over and done. The moment the truck rolled into the carriage house driveway, she released her seat belt and fumbled for the door handle.
“Wait a second while I get the door,” said Trace.
Thinking he meant her truck door, Thomasina waited. Instead, it was the carriage house door. A motion security light came on as he climbed out and slid it open. He returned to the truck, parked inside and killed the headlights.
Thomasina saw him turn in the seat and look her way as her shoulder touched the door. The paper sack she had tucked under the seat earlier slid forward. Her left heel caught in it before she could climb out. She leaned down to free it.
“I’ll get it.”
Trace reached for the sack with one hand, her shoe with the other. Thomasina tried to slip out of it, but his hand had closed around her ankle, too. His touch was brief, impersonal and still it burned. His whole focus was on the sack. What was inside? She whisked it out of his unsuspecting hand in retaliation for fifteen miles of silence.
“Hey!” Trace reacted in surprise as she sprang out of the truck. “Thomasina! Hold up a second.” He climbed out on his side and circled as if to meet her at the back of the truck.
Thomasina moved in the opposite direction, only to regret her impulse as he slid the carriage house door closed, cutting off an easy exit. That left the walk-through door. She lost no time heading that way. But he was fast on her heels, thwarting her effort to put enough distance between them for an unhindered look inside the sack. She reached the walk-through door with only a split-second lead and yanked it open.
Trace reached beyond her and shoved the door closed. “Come on, now,” he cajoled, a grin creeping into his voice. “Hand it over.”
“Why should I?” she said, more petulant than playful.
“Because you’re going to embarrass yourself if you don’t.”
“I don’t know why I’d be embarrassed. Whatever it is, it’s yours, not mine.”
“That’s right. So hand it over.” So saying, he reached to take the sack from her.
Thomasina poked it behind her back. “Back off, bub!”
“Bub?”
Stung by the mockery in his laugh, she thrust out her chin. “I mean it!”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll look!”
He stretched his hands over her head, and leaned against the door with open palms. “Go ahead. If you’re quick enough.”
Thomasina tried to pivot in hopes of creating a niche between his body and the door in which to open the sack. But there wasn’t space.
“Give up?” His voice rumbled too close to her ear.
She slanted her head and lifted one shoulder, a guard against taunting whispers that made her skin tingle. His mouth tilted, but there was no laughter in his eyes. They shone, bold beams. Shone right through her, and sent back a reflection of her own red-faced hungry heart. His mouth lost its easy slant as she wetted her lips. One hand of its own volition moved from the door to her face.
Thomasina shifted, bringing the sack out of hiding. “Take it,” she said, but could not distract him from exploring the curve of her cheek with a caressing fingertip any more than she could muffle the hoof beats crumbling the hard-packed barrier protecting her heart. “Don’t,” she whispered, hugging the sack, a barrier far too slim. “Please…”
“Shh,” he soothed, and stroked her bottom lip with his thumb.
She averted her face before he confirmed the truth she had hidden even from herself. Her life was crowded, but it was not full. There was a lonesome, empty space, so wide, so deep, she was drowning in it. Fifteen miles of angst-ridden silence left her aware of her weakness. “I’m going in. Move,” she said, just as the security light went out.
His chuckle stirred her hair in the blanket of darkness. “What do you know about that? God’s on my side for a change.”
“Your light burned out,” she said, breath catching.
On, no. His light was burning bright enough. She’d ignited it herself, sneaking glimpses of him all the way home, until he’d stopped caring that she wasn’t going to stick around for the long haul. “Aren’t you going to kiss me good-night, Tommy Rose?”
She shoved the sack at him. He dropped it, preferring the satin of her arms. Like trains running on parallel tracks, his hands glided up, past her elbows and followed a path of good intentions to knead the tension in her shoulders before moving on to the slim column of her neck. Her skin was dew to parched hands. He sampled between thumb and fingertip a silken curl, then laced his fingers at the base of her neck. Waiting, giving her options. She didn’t take them. He found the hollow of her throat, stroked it with his thumbs. Felt her pulse purring under sweet-scented skin, and reveled in being right. She was more than smitten. Weak with it. He didn’t know whether to kiss her or stir the ashes of his pride, and let her go while friendship was still an option.
What’s it going to be, Tommy Rose? The camp or me
? The thought caught him up short before he could put it into words. Did it have to be that way? God on one side, him on the other? What would it be like to have Him in his corner?
Thomasina stirred, short-circuiting the thought before he could follow it through. He breathed her name and drew her in. Her cheek was scorched velvet against his throat as she hid her face in the hollow beneath his chin. She kissed him there. A moist, breathless light-as-air kiss that sent shock waves through him.
It shocked Thomasina, too, that she could defy that shrinking shivering child within. The child who whined and warned that he had his own agenda. Hot with embarrassment, she would have quit his arms then and there, except they’d turned into staying bands. His mouth found hers in the darkness. Restrained kisses, seeking, tentative. She answered the wordless question, shyly at first, then with wildly sweet honesty. He explored her face with his kisses, and came back to her mouth, winner’s spoils. An answering strain ran through Thomasina, playing like silvery chimes as his mouth gentled again.
He pressed a kiss to her hair. Half fearful she’d change her mind about him once he let her go, he said, “You work tomorrow?”
“No.”
“You want to go to the air show?”
“What, about your rental house?”
“I’m giving myself the afternoon off.”
They made plans, trading a few more kisses in the dark, reluctant to call it an evening, yet wary of taking it inside. Trace kissed her one last time and let her go.
Chapter Fifteen
Thomasina curled beneath the sheets, going over the evening in her head. The thought of Trace’s blue eyes kept invading her mind, making it hard to sleep. Would she see him before church? Would he go if she asked?
Thomasina heard Trace moving around on the other side of the house. She almost picked up the phone, then thought better of it. The heart that hungered for the bread of life came to the table. She asked instead that God would whet his appetite.